Search Results for: Homeschool Navigator

For the past several weeks we have been using Home School Navigator Reading and Language Arts Curriculum. This is by far my most favorite thing that I have reviewed this school year. I love this program! It is the busy homeschool mom’s dream. This is a comprehensive Language Arts program that takes the guess work out of teaching. Originally I wanted to use this for my two middle children, and have them on different levels but after looking through the curriculum I felt confident that I could place them both in Indigo (5th grade).

The program allowed us a few weeks to decide on which level was most appropriate for our students before we were asked to choose a level to stick with. I really appreciated this option, since I wasn’t too sure about where I was going to put Olivia to begin with.

Homeschool Navigator has six different color levels to choose from. These levels correspond closely with grades K-5.

The Curriculum writers thought of everything. As a former public school teacher I can really appreciate all the thought that was put into each lesson. It reminds me a lot of how I planned out my lessons when I had a classroom of students. They took what was great about that and made it into a very doable homeschool language arts curriculum that can be used with individual students. Check out the Scope and Sequence here.

This program is meant for home educators who are not sure how to approach a language arts program with their children or who need extra support for teaching challenging concepts. (Or for overwhelmed moms like me!)

The entire program can be printed out at once (with the exception of the videos of course), or you can reference it and/or print it out as you go along. I chose to print out the entire level. I would suggest doing this, because although I love the program the website isn’t the easiest to navigate. But by printing it out it also allowed for more of a pick up and go curriculum.

What I really liked about the program:

I’m not a great homeschool teacher. When we started on this journey I fantasized about being a unit study family or a thought that we would take a more organic approach to language arts, but the truth is that the more children we added to our homeschooling and the busier we got, the harder it has become to make sure that each of our children was getting a good solid education. As the years go by I have turned to more of a traditional approach to learning and I think this program works for us. It allows for just enough varying activities without overwhelming me. I love the very short lessons that teach and support the concept being learned. Most of all, I really do love that it’s all planned out. The only thing I need to do is grab the materials that are listed and stop by my library to pick up the books I don’t already own.

What didn’t work for us:

As I already mentioned the website is a little hard to maneuver around. While it’s laid out sequentially there are so many parts to click on that I would often get confused as to what I was looking for. What did help was that each page is printed with the lesson on the bottom of them. I finally figured out that the numbers at the bottom of each page lined up by month/week/day. Once I figured this out, things became much clearer for me.

Something to consider:

This program isn’t a Christian program. {I have no idea what the beliefs are of the authors} but if you are looking for a literature based program that is Christian based, this isn’t the one for you. The program uses strong popular children’s literature with good writing. That being said there was nothing alarming about the choice of literature or the lessons. They are very well thought out and put together. I only mention it because I know that some families want their literature choices to have strong Christian biases.

How we used it:

Although the program is set up to teach 5 days a week, we only do it for 4 days. It’s easy to combine a day, extend the program past 36 weeks or skip a day altogether. Each day that we used the program I would sit down with my kiddos and go over the lesson. If there was a read aloud we would read it together. They typically watched the video lessons on their own while I worked with our youngest. Our kids did all worksheets independently unless they had difficulty and then we would go over the answers together.

Cost:

The program is $97 a student. This includes everything in the level including the videos. If you like the more traditional approach to learning then I think this is a very fair price for a comprehensive year long language arts curriculum.

Other crew members had the opportunity to review the other levels in the program. Check out what they had to say about it here:

If you are teaching your child to read, you know that patience like Job is a requirement. There is nothing more trying than to spend 10 minutes teaching the sound that “m” makes, only to hear your child say “rrrr” when you show them the letter “m” {face Palm}

This is the fourth round of teaching one of our children to read, and this one has been the most challenging. She has made me pull out all my teacher tricks and then some. But in the end I realized that the simpler the approach I used the more effective our time was. Before I simplified our approach I think she was overwhelmed and by the time we were done with our school time, we were both frustrated and I had nothing left to give my other children.

If you are interested in our routine you can check it out in this post.

Beyond our routine I wanted to share some of the books I use and the fun extras I do to go along with the concepts that are important to learn at this age.

Reading Resources:

Y’all if you have a child that is struggling to read, or having a hard time with sounds and basic phonics, then I highly recommend this book. If you were ever an elementary teacher, that taught high risk students, the book’s format is similar to the Reading Mastery program. Every time I sit down to do a lesson with Maddie, I’m thankful again for this $15.00 book.

We began this program but realized Maddie wasn’t ready for it. Once we finish 100 Easy Lessons, we will go back to this program. I love it. I love the tactile approach, the stories, the worksheets… If you have a student that isn’t struggling so much, then this is the program I would go with.

I had the chance to review this program last year and I was really impressed with it. This takes more of a whole language approach to reading. We have incorporated several parts of this program this year. I really love the living book approach this program uses.

If you don’t know about Bob books, you are missing out! These little books are fantastic confidence boosters. I have used them with each of our children. What I love about these little books is that the words in each level follow along with just about every beginning reading program, so they are a great supplement to go with whatever you are currently using.

Rhyming Games

We love this rhyming card game. Okay, I love it! Rhyming is an important concept to understand. It’s actually something Maddie has always been really good at, but she is challenged by this matching game.

I have talked a lot about this online reading program lately, because after trying so many, it is the only one that has really worked for us. We love it. Madelyn loves that there is a map that she moves her avatar around on and that she earns eggs by completing the lesson. I love that each lesson focuses on just a couple concepts and that those concepts are reinforced throughout. I did a review on this product a few months ago, you can read about it here. This is the only program I have reviewed that I will pay to continue to use it. You can check it out for a free trial here.